‘Morning, Simon. Come on in. Katie, no calls unless very urgent.’
People who assumed that the Chief Constable had a massive space, with mahogany furnishings, deep carpet and its own espresso machine, would not have recognised this utilitarian room with a veneered office desk, metal waste bin, standard-issue computer and no coffee equipment. The view was of the station car park and the side road.
‘Any news on the arm?’
‘Another couple of weeks. Right, I have the Still files all loaded onto here and my notes alongside. I’m afraid there’s quite a lot to be looked into, but it boils down to some slapdash policing, not enough focus on the routine detail, not enough follow-up where it was strongly indicated … and in my opinion, the SIO concentrated too much on one area and ignored the parallel investigations that should have been taking place – at least in his own head if nowhere else.’
‘I’ve read the outline but I didn’t have time to go over it closely, so talk me through.’ Kieron leaned back in his black leather chair – the only non-standard–issue item in the room. ‘Katie will bring us some coffee in a minute.’
‘Right. Kimberley Still, aged twenty-five. Lived in Mount field Avenue, Lafferton, with her mother, Mrs Marion Still. Father deceased some twelve years earlier, one married brother who was working in Canada at the time of her disappearance and is now in Newcastle. Kimberley had a serious boyfriend who was likely to become a fiancé any day – at least he said so, and Kimberley had talked about it to her friends so there’s no reason to doubt it. He was out of Lafferton for four days over the time she disappeared, on a course in Basingstoke. All verified. Kimberley worked at SK Bearings, had done for three and a half years. Regarded as an excellent worker, keen, never late, rarely ill, not any sort of a time-waster. They thought a lot of her. On Wednesday 3 June, she clocked into work as usual at eight thirty. She mentioned that she wanted to go into town to exchange a pair of shoes she’d got in the wrong size and she also said she hadn’t brought anything in for her lunch so she might get it in town. In the summer she often took a packed lunch and ate it in the Adelaide Road Park, either with a workmate or on her own. She clocked off at a quarter to one – she had an hour and a quarter off. She was the first out that day and her colleague Louise Woods said that she hadn’t actually taken the shoes with her – they were still in her locker when it was searched, in their box and carrier bag, receipt enclosed. So maybe she forgot them but most likely she changed her mind about going into town. It was a fine warm sunny day, perhaps she thought she wouldn’t waste it in shops. But after she left her workplace, alone, nobody there saw her again. She didn’t come back after lunch, or again that day, which was very unlike her and she didn’t ring in or even text anyone she worked with. It was remarked on quickly, and just before they clocked off at five, Lousie took it upon herself to ring Marion Still, to ask if Kimberley had come home because she was ill. She hadn’t and Mrs Still hadn’t heard anything from her since she left that morning. By seven o’clock that evening the alarm was raised. Mrs Still had phoned everyone she could think of but there was really nobody Kimberley would have gone to, or with, except her boyfriend and he was away on his course – Mrs Still apparently knew that already but she checked to make sure. There was no chance that her daughter would have gone anywhere without telling her and especially it seemed totally unlikely to everyone who knew her that she would simply have decided not to return to work after lunch.
‘We then get the police visits and when Kimberly had failed to come home or get in touch with anyone at all by the next morning, the inquiry moved up several notches. A team was set up and the case was regarded as a missper. The usual lines of inquiry were followed up … everyone at SK Bearings was interviewed, Mrs Still gave a list of her daughter’s friends that she knew of and who were not work colleagues, leaflets were rushed out and distributed in the town centre, in shops Kimberley was known to visit sometimes, the paper shop where she often bought a magazine and a drink if she was going to have her lunch in the park. The local paper ran the story with a photo of Kimberley the next day. All the usual. It was well covered in the routine sense. But the SIO decided that as there was no sighting of the girl and as it seemed wholly out of character for her to disappear of her own accord, she must have gone with someone, either voluntarily – which idea was dismissed pretty much off the cuff – or under duress. The DCI put out an appeal on television. He was convinced, he said, that the girl was being held somewhere and could well be still alive.’
The door opened on Katie with a tray of coffee and biscuits. Mugs of freshly brewed, Simon was pleased to notice, and chocolate biscuits.
Now, a couple of months after Kimberley disappeared, the same thing happened in the Devon and Cornwall police area. Petra Blake, aged twenty-three, from just outside Exeter, went missing on her way home after an evening out with some friends who were celebrating a birthday. It wasn’t very late – Petra left first as she had some things to do at home – her parents were away on holiday and there were two dogs to feed and so on. She was on her own for the week so she wasn’t reported missing until the next day when a neighbour heard the dogs barking and howling non-stop, which apparently they never did. They went into the house with a key they kept and found everything as normal, the dogs starving and no sign at all of Petra – she clearly hadn’t been home the previous night. Usual search, nothing. But her naked body was found bound and gagged, a week later, in a gully on farmland twenty-odd miles away. She’d been strangled … no sexual assault though, which was unusual. Of course the similarities with the Kimberley Still case were flagged up and we liaised with them, they had access to whatever we had. But it was all circumstantial at that point. A month later, Avon and Somerset also had a missing girl, Annabel Perkins, aged twenty-six, a nurse who had gone missing as she walked from her flat to go on early duty at the hospital – not far. She was known to have left at seven twenty-five – her two flatmates vouched for that. One was a nurse, the other a physio, at the same hospital but neither was on early shift like Annabel. Again, going A WOL was regarded as totally out of character. She had split up with a long-term boyfriend a couple of weeks earlier, though quite amicably, so not likely to have arranged to meet him or any other male. But she had occasionally walked in to work with Chris Maynard – the boyfriend – who lived nearby and was a junior doctor. He was interviewed but had an alibi. Annabel’s naked body was found buried in a shallow grave, in dense woodland about five miles from the hospital. Again she’d been tied up and strangled, but no sexual assault. Clearly that case and the one in Exeter had been linked quite quickly. Incidentally, no clothes belonging to either of those girls were ever found, though there was extensive searching in both cases. But Lee Russon was caught on CCTV in the case of the Bristol girl, Annabel Perkins. He drove a dirty white Ford van and one of those was seen by two people around the hospital area the morning Annabel disappeared. He was tracked down and interviewed but it was all too vague at that point. When Annabel’s body was found, however, they got his DNA. It was also found on the body of Petra Blake. There were similarities between both these cases and the first one, our Kimberley, but her body wasn’t found, of course, and still hasn’t been. Dead end. No case to answer, so Russon went down for the two others and we have an open file.’
‘But this has to be sexual. Was everyone really satisfied that there had been no sexual assaults on the two bodies they had?’
‘Apparently. The pathologist in Exeter was killed in a car crash not long after but the junior and the attendants were still there and all the notes. Seems cast iron. Same with the Bristol girl.’
They drank their coffee and refilled. Kieron leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head, thinking. Simon scrolled down to see what came next, because he had the feeling that so far he had failed to impress the need for the Kimberley case to be reopened.
‘The next thing I come to is what seems to me really significant … with such a gap in what should have been full and detailed inquiries – so much so that I went back over it all twice, and then checked that there were no pages of the reports missing – there weren’t.’
‘You’re convinced about this, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. I have no interest in manufacturing a case where there isn’t one, or in wasting our limited resources. There’s an argument that whether he killed Kimberley or not, Lee Russon is doing life anyway and his sentence can’t be added to. This may be just pandering to Mrs Still’s quite understandable feelings, to no great purpose.’
‘He could have his sentence added to, at least on paper. And it would prevent any request for parole or early release being heard. I don’t want this to be a vendetta against an earlier investigating team, that’s all.
‘Neither do I. I have no personal quarrel with anyone.’
‘All right … let’s get to the heart of it.’
As we know, Kimberley hadn’t made herself a packed lunch on the day she disappeared. There is a record of the owner of the corner shop near the factory being asked if he recognised her photograph and he did – he said she would buy a drink, a paper or a magazine from him, occasionally something more – fruit, some crisps maybe. On this day, he – his name is Chan – was not in the shop at all, he had to take his wife to the hospital for an appointment. A note was made of this, and another, that a return call should be made to check with the two people who were helping out – one in the morning, one from half past one. There is no record of this having been done. The shop closed last year and it’s now a taxicab office.
‘However, an officer did go to the park. It’s very popular with mothers and toddlers – there’s a duck pond – with office people in the lunch hour, and with those just using it as a shortcut. There are also a number of older people who meet there or who just go alone on fine days, to sit on the benches. There’s been a recent problem with its use by druggies – evidence of needles and paraphernalia – and with the occasional rough sleeper, but those don’t happen in daylight or hardly, and they haven’t been pursued.
‘Leaflets about Kimberley were handed out to people in the park on a couple of days and people took them, and said they would have a think, but only two said they recognised her. One was an old man who was dozing on a bench and said he might have seen her, though he often nodded off. As the officer was talking to him, a young woman came up – she’d been handed a leaflet too. She thought it was probably Kimberley who had helped her when her toddler ran down towards the pond.
‘The girl had a double buggy with a baby in it as well and she was in a panic trying to get the buggy brake on and go after her boy. Apparently Kimberley had jumped up from her bench and run across – grabbed him just in time. The mother – Natalie Stoker, twenty-seven – had, of course, been extremely grateful and they had had a brief chat. The problem was that she came into the park most weekdays and couldn’t be sure if this had happened on the day Kimberley went missing, which was a Wednesday, or the day before … possibly even on the Monday. She said she would think hard about it. Perhaps she did but so far as the files show, no one went back to interview her again. Her name and address are noted but that’s all. And then there was the elderly gent – Stanley Barnard. He had taken a leaflet and said he was in the park often and thought he recognised the photo. For some reason either he wasn’t questioned further or there is no record of it. Perhaps he was another they were going to get back to but didn’t.
‘Anything else?’
‘That’s enough to give me a reason to try and find both those people and reinterview.’
‘Just about.’
Simon drank the last of the coffee, and as he did so, the Chief’s phone rang. He raised an eyebrow and answered, listened, said, ‘Thank you. Give me a moment, Katie … Message from Cat. She said to tell us she was on her way to Bevham General with your father. She thinks he may have had a heart attack but it could be pleurisy. She’ll let me know.’
‘Shit. I’d better go up there. I’ve nearly finished. Let me just come to what I think needs looking at more closely. As far as I could find out, nobody went back to see the young mother and nobody reinterviewed the old man, on that day or any other. By then everyone was being spread out on searches and the park was ticked off.’
‘So – what would you hope to find at this stage?’
‘The young woman and the old man … and put out a press call asking again for people who used that park to think back, look at the photographs of Kimberley, try to remember. But they were two who definitely recognised her only days after she disappeared. Why did no one go back and talk to them again?’
‘Yes, they should have done so, as a matter of routine checking, I agree. But still – it’s five years ago, populations change and shift. What chance of finding those two and getting any helpful info at this stage?’
‘Not a lot probably but that isn’t a reason for letting it go again.’
The Chief stood up. ‘I have to meet the Police Commissioner in quarter of an hour. I want to think about this and I’ll come up with a decision for you tonight – come round and eat? No idea if Cat will be there – but can you let me know about Richard? I hope things aren’t as bad as they sound.’
Simon was closing down his laptop, and as he did so, he looked quickly across at his brother-in-law. ‘You don’t care for Dad, do you? No, it’s all right – nor do I much.’
Kieron did not reply.